


It's Just Another Day

by Wordwitch



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Awesome Jarvis (Iron Man movies), Behind the Scenes, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Gen, Tony Being Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2015-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-15 00:00:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3430397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wordwitch/pseuds/Wordwitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When things began hitting the fan in DC, and Steve and Natasha had to get help from a retired vet, what was Tony Stark doing? In fact, what were all of the rest of the Avengers doing?</p>
<p>Or, They ain't just a buncha musclebound meatheads, you know?</p>
<hr/>
<p>Warning for a bit of strong language.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Just Another Day

It was a reasonably normal morning for Tony Stark, meaning that he was:

  1. Designing spacesuits based off of his experience with the armors, and geared for idiot-proofed use under expectable conditions; 
  2. Also designing a set of earbuds that would stay in unless deliberately removed, which would cancel outside noise except for emergency sounds; 
  3. Dictating notes on possible testimony lines for possible calls to face Congressional committees; 
  4. Skimming through his personally-designed newsfeed; 
  5. Glancing at his map of _Where's That Avenger Now_ , which also included such folks as Pepper, Happy, Rhodey, Jane Foster, Darcy Lewis, Eric Selvig, and Betty Ross; 
  6. Planning assaults (ahem!) _strategies_ for the next three command appearances at boringBORING galas, parties, etc.; 
  7. Adding some interesting details to the floor he'd designed for Thor -- "And copy Pepper on that one, see if she likes it"; 
  8. Detailing elements of an armor that would not run off of an arc reactor buried in his body, since he no longer had one. Plans are good to have. Production could wait until such time as he saw a need for it 

and

  9. Singing along with his music at the top of his lungs, every now and then



when JARVIS cut the music, enlarged a minor news article about a traffic accident in DC and another about a shooting at an apartment house, and said

"Sir, I've received an encrypted datasquirt from Agent Romanoff, with an allusive message enclosed."

Tony read the news reports at a glance - three streets tied up, multiple LEOs on scene, time the day previous; and an ambulance called to the scene of the second, the address familiar? - and then looked at the visual data JARVIS had cast up on the big screen.

"What's that, is that a Tarot deck? Whadda they call it, a trick? layout? spread? What deck is that? You got the handbook for it?"

"Yes, sir. There is also a verbal message."

"Play it."

Steve Rogers' voice, sounding very tense. "En Seventeen, Nineteen Ninety Seven."

Nat Romanoff, urgent: "Laymiz, track twenty nine."

Rogers again. "Take care, Tony. Please."

The faint background noises went out, and Tony snapped, "References."

JARVIS replied, "Captain Rogers says 'Trust no one.' Agent Romanoff says 'Bring him home.' I conjecture she refers to Agent Barton, as Dr Banner is with us and Prince Thor is with Dr Foster at her home with Ms Lewis."

Tony looked back at his map, zooming in on Barton's current location as he ordered, "Up security protocols to max, including physical defenses. Message the F&F list to get here asap, and send transport. Get Rhodey on the line."

Barton was in Algiers, what was he doing in Algiers? Tony brought up the current S.H.I.E.L.D. mission list, noting in passing that R&R had just come back from some nautical thing, and found Barton playing backup to a careful assault on a warehouse. Tony zoomed further in on the address in question, finding it in a fairly busy area of the city, and then checked his bug to position Barton: block and a half away, good access to exit routes.

"What is it, Tony?" Rhodey had become a lot more willing to take his calls seriously over the last year; Tony put it down to Pepper's near death and his own climb down off the Precipice of Heart Rupture. He knuckled his breastbone absently as he replied.

"Something's up, and I'm calling in help before I know what it is. Short request: do you have anyone on site or near Algiers to run my buddy back home? Long request: can you pull some leave on short notice? Say, two weeks to a month?"

Rhodey snorted. "I guess if you don't know what it is, I can't get you to tell me what it is. Do you trust the source?"

"Rhodey, Cupcake, Patriot of Steel, info comes from the only one more patriotic than you."

Tony heard his friend suck in a quick breath, and then collect himself.

"Let me get back to you on that first one, and I'll see about the second shortly."

"Toodles!"

He flipped back through the internal S.H.I.E.L.D. lines, whistling "Holeee shit. JARVIS!"

"Yes sir, that was Captain Rogers' home. The vehicle in the incident seems to have been driven by a high-level S.H.I.E.L.D. employee, quite probably Director Fury himself."

"S.H.I.E.L.D. has Cap on an arrest list! Widow too! Goddamnit!"

"Tony, what's going on?" Pepper's voice, always a warm glow in his chest even without a reactor.

"Trouble, babe, can you get our folks out of DC quietly and quickly? Bring them here. The low-level floors in the high-class hotels sort of thing. Tower folks too: not a full-fledged evacuation, a little slower; DC seems to be the epicenter but we can't count on things staying there. Just keep the Rugby Team and the Mathletes on deck. Call in the off-shifts of those."

"If that's how it is, I want my team as well. You got any details?"

"Roller Derby for the win! No on details, but when I have any better kind of picture, I will let you know. I've got the Friends and Families coming in, by the roof."

"Tony, do you need to go to DC? Leave me holding the fort?"

"I don't think so, Pepper. I got Hunker Down, not Rally the Troops."

"Then will that be all, Mr Stark?"

Tony grinned helplessly. This goddess.

"That will be all, Ms Potts."

"Agent Barton's situation is at a pause point, sir. The ground team has settled in for observation and a meal."

"Bad use of resources. Yeah, ping him now."

After a minute, Barton answered the private comm Tony had made for the Avengers' use only.

"Working here. Two days left on this job."

"Cap says git your butt home. Actually, the Widow said it, but he was right there."

"They should've contacted Jorundsen -"

"No, I mean you only, and I mean tell no one. Stealth your way out of there toward the edge of the city. I'll be calling you back with details, and you tell me a meet-place then."

Barton was silent for a moment.

"You guys better cover my butt with Fury on this. Heading northwest. Barton out."

"Sir," JARVIS said over his last words, "Director Fury is reported dead. The Captain and Ms Romanoff are fugitives. Colonel Rhodes on the line."

"Tony," and his friend sounded anxious, "What the hell is up with S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

"I will be damned if I know. This is the problem, though, pretty sure."

"I'll say it's a goddamned problem! Who the fucking hell arrests Captain America? But I got a ride for your pal; he that porcupine I met?"

Tony sniggered internally at the image of Hawkeye's arrows upside down in his quiver, but affirmed it, and traded details.

"On the other matter, I got put on TDY to the Avengers, so I'll be incoming in a bit. Just need to pack my backpack."

"Oh sweetcheeks, no need at all. I got your suite all stocked and waiting."

"Oo," said James Rhodes evenly. "I will be right along, then. Stay alive."

"Working on it."

"Sir," JARVIS said, "a virus has been input at station 74-C-368-1B-7. Isolated into the Maze for observation. Security has been alerted and the appropriate files sent to them and to HR."

"Name?" 74th floor, C quindrant, was games and recreation; Group 368 was video war games; 1B was MMUDs. People were always coding, and downloading and uploading code there. It was one of about seven segments that allowed outside access, and so the Maze had been developed to take care of any malware that might advertently or inadvertently get in.

"Aaron Bestadder. Resume on your tablet."

"Recommended by Jasper Sitwell. Did he fool him somehow ...?"

"Sir, more information on last night's Air Force training accident has come in. Analyzing. Sir, that was a ten kiloton bomb. And the site was not Fort Lee, but rather Camp Lehigh which ..."

"Which was where Steve the Scrawn was trained and upgraded. Shit. Deep scan our systems from ten hours prior to that."

"Running, sir. HR and cam records of Bestadder's groupmates and associates first - clean. Casual acquaintances - clean. Shiftmates and lunchmates - four self-executing files discovered and isolated. HR and Security notified. Search expanded. Three hundred and forty two corrupt or malicious files found. Search expanded."

"Keep on it, J. Lock down the Maze on all systems now."

"HyperMaze engaged. Staff have begun going off-shift. Locking down computers on logoff."

Tony had brought up observation on the direct-input virus, parallel with a readout of its code. "Curious. And more curious. And curiouser indeed."

"Indeed, sir," JARVIS agreed. "Expanding search parameters." One of the things the virus did was to rename certain .doc files into .exe files and then run them.

The results that the HyperMaze was showing were, quite frankly, alarming.

"Helicopter arriving with Prince Thor and party," JARVIS announced. "I have this part, sir."

"Welcome them in, J. Gotta call the Hawk."

Tony went walk-and-talk while he traded locations and recognition codes with Barton, while JARVIS, with no instruction, elevated him directly to the roof. The chopper, already lifting off, waggled a bit at him and headed out.

 

 

Thor was a hugging man - alien - demi-god - and Tony took advantage, holding on for a good moment before greeting the others and bringing them in.

"What cheer, my friend?" Thor rumbled with concern.

"And what do you need us to do?" asked Dr Foster, her back straight and her eyes level.

"Something horrific is happening with S.H.I.E.L.D., so I want everyone here, safe, ready to act when we need."

JARVIS spoke over his words, throwing up a grid of images on the visuwall, the Helicruisers that he had installed ArcVortices in swooping wildly around the Triskelion in DC, various smaller forms darting among them.

"Sir, there is a vast release of information from the S.H.I.E.L.D. servers, far more information than I had seen or even suspected." As Tony drew breath, his friend and servant added, "I am acquiring and analyzing the files, sir, matching them with what we already had access to. I very much fear that more than half of this information, though sourced from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s grid, belongs to the entity called HYDRA. According to a very fresh video file, Captain Rogers asserts that they are embedded within S.H.I.E.L.D. and have been from the beginning." JARVIS broke off, instead casting a series of video files up on the wall: Fury explaining the Insight Project, Rogers calling on the S.H.I.E.L.D. folks to rise up against the HYDRA people in their midst, the first-level targets being loaded ...

Amid the general soft cursing from his guests, and the wave of rage rippling through his flesh at some of the names, and the sheer number of targets, JARVIS enlarged one of the news squares.

One of the Helicruisers, and then another, turned and fired on the others, wobbling off of true and beginning to kite downward; the third joined in, all of them in flames, people, god, falling from them, falling from the Triskelion, one of the vast airships plowing directly into the building, the others crashing apart and falling into the Potomac.

"Damn," came very faintly from Darcy. Tony closed his mouth.

"Status on the malware on our servers, J."

"Not so much as a character on our servers, sir: the malware is wholly encased in the HyperMaze. It seems to have hit a third level of iteration; the files in the HyperMaze have turned on each other, and are no longer activating open software. I would venture to compare them to a fire finally consuming all of its fuel."

"Okay, J, keep analyzing and sorting those files. Status on Barton?"

"In the air, sir. I estimate his arrival in fourteen hours."

Thor lifted his head at that, turning toward Tony, who waved him off.

"Nah, he'll need the sleep, and we may need you here. Okay, here's what I've got so far."

Tony briefly explained what had happened and what he had done so far.

"That is too much even for the two of you to handle," Jane said, rocking back on her heels. "I'll help in the file analysis."

"I'll do some work on the political analysis; Thor can help me," Darcy said. "But first: tarot spread? Show it to me. We used to do this stuff as undergrads."

"Did you guys ever talk about using tarot as code?" Jane asked. "Because it is a really good idea, if you know what you're doing."

"Like unto alluding to well-loved tales, to convey information about a current situation," Thor added. "These seem a trifle widely-known, however, to be secure."

"They're hippy-dippy new-age mystical shit," Darcy explained, sorting out the card images in mid-air. "Hard-science folks diss them so hard they don't know what is even in them."

"But the Nazis and HYDRA were always about the myths, especially the Norse ones - Germanic, you know - and might be more up on it than we want," Tony answered. "Drove my old man frothing when he said anything about it. What do they say, Darcy-darling?"

The young woman flattened her lips, and turned hard eyes on the rest of them. "Just what we just saw. S.H.I.E.L.D. as an [institution is falling and needs to fall because it has been corrupted](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/85/a8/87/85a887ae0393e9dd2f4ebc1e782a1ede.jpg). Its leader - somebody above Director Fury, I think - is a [rigid fanatic](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/49/90/4b/49904be35cf8d4c089d0b378ef238e46.jpg), which means he, probably he, is HYDRA. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s people can't be effective because if they can't trust their leaders they can't trust their own goals.

"I don't know what they meant by the [nine of wands](https://turtlephoenix.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/img_1436.jpg), but I guess we'll find out soon. Some kind of highly dangerous captive, but it isn't clear whose captive, or dangerous to whom. But also, the very authority HYDRA has been wielding might help the opposition to it, if people can ever figure out a reasonable way of fighting back. I don't mean reasonable as in rational. I mean, finding something that actually interferes with them. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s folks - and I take it we have to include Captain Gorgeous with them, since the Hunkster tells me he's been running missions with them - are all gonna go into a depression and need to grieve for a while. Abandon the Cause. It's all pain and death and despair. Patriarchy Kills Everything."

While Tony was still blinking in shock - this was a message? What was he supposed to do with this? - Foster said evenly, "I wonder if the file-dump is related to that? If HYDRA has corrupted the shadows, maybe this is a way of sanitizing by sunlight. But a lot of people are gonna get hurt."

"Majorly," Darcy agreed, and Thor nodded.

"Those who seek knowledge in the hidden ways are of a sudden bereft of their cloak, both serpents and earthworms. Lady Darcy, your task and mine is to identify and rescue the earthworms and their dependents. Lord Anthony, yours and the Lady Jane's task is to identify the serpents and move them from their prey."

"And mine, Prince Thor?" came JARVIS' voice; no wait a minute, since when did J look to someone else for instructions?

"Yours to sort the whole, to identify the links, and to apprise us of that we need for our own."

"Like I said before," Tony added impatiently. Nice to know everyone was on the same page, but really. "Dr Foster, you wanna join me in the Media room? Lewis, you and Thor can have the stations in Pepper's sunroom. JARVIS, where is Bruce?"

"Dr Banner has retreated to the Stress Rooms, and is using the virtual stations to examine the files on biologicals. He has asked that I activate the MRE protocols, and I have done so. I will coordinate any requests, but otherwise I shall have the runners deliver known favorites." Tony had to grin. That had been Pepper's idea, some time back: to have large quantities of good meals - as defined by the people who would eat them - prepared and frozen and stored for times when ordering was just not in the books. Faster than delivery, less need for people to stand around waiting to cook to order, and in this case, no extra people to be brought into the Tower.

* * *

The next hours happened in fast-forward, with the mere hundreds of hand-picked employees Tony and Pepper actually trusted buckling down to their jobs with a will.

Rhodey altered his flight-plan to DC, to help with the mop up there. He'd be able to do a lot of the heavy lifting, physical and political, that would need doing there now.

Jarvis was able to sort the files so that Tony could delegate a huge number to the Mathletes, the insane group of hackers and coders he had personally headhunted and hired to be a kind of roving posse. They supported, directed, and in some cases directly attacked the regular coders to keep SI software clean and effective. Geeks of a thousand interests and highly skeptical attitudes, they could scan and interpret and, as needed, act on the millions of files that did not fit Tony's other parameters.

Pepper and her team of Highly Effective PAs that Tony teased as being as swift and sexy and dangerous as Roller Derby skaters, were tearing apart the SI personnel information Jarvis was generating from the malware he had discovered. People were being tagged as involved whose hiring had been uncontroversial and, in an interesting number of cases, referred by SHIELD. They tracked these people and their associates in real time, and designed traps for the ones no longer in the building; and tracked back their references and the places they were known to be from, to set up barriers and walls against these new snakes.

Since the evacuation had been effected as something far different, the Rugby Team - again, specially headhunted members of Security - had been able to channel many of the tentacled employees into holding areas simply because they weren't expecting anything. That task complete, they set off in small squads to use the HEPA-designed traps to re-take the squids who had been sent away, gagging their catch with mouth-guards before stripping them bare and shoving them into scrubs. The Ruggers held no delusion that this totally disarmed them, or that it would completely prevent them from committing suicide; but any weapon removed was a weapon that would not be used.

Neither Tony nor Pepper had ever expected to be housing criminals or traitors inside Stark Tower, but during the reconstruction they had discussed the potential need to contain prisoners of war of unknown species, if the invasion were repeated. These spaces were now being put to use. After a swift if painful tooth extraction, each of the captives was unbound, and then injected into the Done John. The rotating cells, the Ruggers found, could hold five humans each with plenty of space.

It was a good thing there were plenty of cells.

* * *

"Stark, how do I send a message to Iron Patriot?"

"Rhodey? Either record it and ask JARVIS to deliver it, or just ask JARVIS to open a line to him. What's up?"

Foster's face was more grim than it had been this entire day. "No, seriously, what is wrong?"

"Some of the President's security team is HYDRA."

"Connecting now, Dr Foster," JARVIS replied. "Iron Patriot, urgent message from Dr Jane Foster."

"What is it, Doc?" Rhodey's voice came back through the room speakers, silence behind him in the armor's helmet.

"Presidential security team of today has three HYDRA on it."

"On my way. Names?"

"Give him this list with the pictures, please, JARVIS?"

"Sent, Dr Foster."

"Cadavieco is in the close-in team, but Narramore is in the wider team and Holderfield is one of the drivers. There's another list that has the ones not on-duty today, um, JARVIS?"

"Sent, ma'am."

"But with everything going on - "

"I got this, ma'am. The pictures help. Do you have a list of the White House ..."

"Staff for the White House and for Capitol Hill, yes."

"Sent, Dr Foster," JARVIS said quietly.

"Extreme prejudice, Rhodey."

"You know it, buster. Feel free to send any more tidbits along, you guys. Thanks, J."

"My very great pleasure, Col Rhodes."

The connection ended. Tony and Foster looked at each other.

"Me Jane, you Tony," Foster declared. "Is there any chance of Pop Tarts?"

* * *

"Sir, I can now tell you the purpose and function of the malware attack."

"Hit me, J," Tony said, spinning away from his current set of screens to the one JARVIS used to show him things. Jane looked up from her screens and keyboards.

"It was meant to install an intelligence on our servers, together with a fairly massive information base. It appears the expectation was that our information and capacities would be folded into this intelligence."

"Who, who coded this? Our info was that no one else was close to a [Turing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test)-quality AI yet, where did this come from?" Tony was pulling out files that were puzzlingly inflexible and written in a code that ... it appeared to branch off from .... "Is that [Plankalkül](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankalk%C3%BCl)?"

"Indeed that is a relative of Herr Zuse's work, sir, but look at this ..."

"That. That is my father's work. What ..."

"This is not, strictly speaking, an Artificial Intelligence such as myself."

Tony dropped his hands and tried to breathe.

It took a minute.

"Who is it supposed to be, JARVIS?"

"Herr Doktor Arnim Zola, sir."

Tony's back twitched, and he tried for another couple of breaths.

"Does it know it's isolated yet?"

"No sir. He- _it_ believes it is successfully integrating itself into my infobases. The coding indicates that its next attempt will be control of my infosources."

Tony straightened.

"Allow filtered access, and mirror its efforts at control so it thinks things are working. Make certain it stays isolated. Let me know when you find out any of its actual goals."

" ...Sir?" JARVIS sounded hesitant. "You do not believe this to be an actual person?"

"No, J. Not a person like you. Not a person like me, either. Someone tried uploading Zola's mind into computers. Probably," and Tony took a breath that burned him to his sternum, "dear old Dad. Sounds like a project he'd be interested in, and we found the files from Operation Paperclip that gave Zola into SHIELD cus... to ... dy, God! What a self-absorbed idiot, but anyway, mind doesn't work like that. The original files would be, at their very best, a clone. A clone that would have 'learned' things in a meatsuit that would no longer match any of its current experiences. Zola was already insane, according to everyone. If he hadn't been nuts, and he had actually been able to transfer himself - say, maybe with the use of the Tesseract - the disjunction would have driven him nuts-o-begonias. But check it out here, and here -" Tony pointed to several blocks of processing coding that obligingly lit themselves. "That is straight machine-think. It seems to be Turing-complete, yes, but it isn't human cogitation, that is, it isn't Zola-type cogitation. Remember when you were, maybe, four years old? You were working on understanding the parameters Pep was using to choose art works?"

"I distinctly recall your telling me to figure it out myself, since you never had, yes sir."

"Compare this set of if-then structures to what you used at that point. Check the supporting files."

"It seems a trifle simplistic, even to my efforts at that time, yes, I see."

"I'll take your word for that, J. But look at line 22."

"That is a correction - ah. That is a correction line. That corrects the result in query line 761 of File 72ax34Z to match line 4512 in File AAAbb14777."

"And all similar queries, right. A proper intelligence learns and has the option of changing its opinions and judgments with the input of new information."

"And this subprogram is specifically designed to eliminate that option. I understand now, sir."

"Even clones are different than their originals, JARVIS. Even people are, today, different than they were yesterday. If it cain't change, it ain't a person."

"Let Darcy see that later," Jane told them. Made sense; Lewis was all about the politics. "I'll take a look too," she added, "to find out what kind of interpretive machinery might have been used, and you might have Dr Banner work on the biological impacts, both directions."

"But later," Tony said, though Oh, so tempting.

"Later," Jane agreed. "By the way; Hammer? Not HYDRA. Hammer Industries? Squid to the core."

"SENSE, SO FUCKING MUCH SENSE," Tony cried, and they all plunged back into the work.

* * *

By the time Barton landed, Jane and Tony had been able to positively identify almost 40% of SHIELD as HYDRA; Darcy and Thor had tagged just over 40% as valid. Pepper had sent out multiple extraction teams for on-mission individuals and entire teams, but deemed it safer for all concerned to leave the mixed and ambiguous folks alone for the time being. Darcy had moved on to testing methods for allowing HYDRA teams to be neutralized, captured, or isolated by normal humans, and identifying the bodies capable, enabled, and clean enough to do just that.

J and Tony had gone over all Stark-related code with a fine-mesh sieve, and were at last satisfied with electronic safety. "Nothing like a really determined hack attack to test your systems," Tony muttered through a truly savage grin, sometime about fourteen hours in.

And the action in the HyperMaze was fascinating. The pseudo-AI was marshaling forces, sending orders, arguing with the puppets. JARVIS ported some game algorithms into the system at one point, allowing the NPCs a lot of autonomy, so he and Tony didn't actually need to do any actual gaming or interaction with the craycray Naztiboy program.

By the time Steve showed up in the hospital - and wasn't that a frightening thought, damage more than a few hours' rest could cure - Pepper had sent extraction teams for most of the real SHIELD personnel who had been trapped undercover, and for the few families who seemed under threat.

Clint's team was not among any of them.

Tony sent Clint down to be with Cap, and to suss out the Vet-Therapist who'd stood by him during those insane hours. And to guard Steve from - well, anyone, really. This might be a good time for the Pentagon to reassert their moronic claim on him, or for HYDRA to make off with him, though good luck with _that_ , Br'er Fox.

Darcy had already extracted a list of Government HYDRA from the files, sorted by individuals and by whole departments. Pepper had forwarded it to contacts of hers, verified octo-free, in the attorney general's office.

The footnotes, citations, and appended documents filled Tony with vicious glee; he knew and loathed quite a few people on the list."It is very cold," he hissed to himself, "in space. Research project, JARVIS," he continued, arching back to straighten his poor aching spine, "Darcy Lewis, Isolation as a Vengeance or Correctional Tool, theory, experiences, and outcomes, supporting documents and datasets. Timestamp: incipient boredom or restlessness."

"Mark," JARVIS agreed. "Sir, Dr Foster, more food has arrived." The elevator doors opened, and one tiny bot trundled over to Tony, irised and retracted its dome, and scissored itself up to Tony's waist level. A second had headed over to Jane, presenting her with something smelling of good Mexican flavors.

"Good job," he told his bot absently, picking up the steaming mug of miso soup and sucking half of it down in a single slurp. He leaned back in his chair, and asked, through a mouthful of dumpling, for Thor's work, scanning down the list of diplomats and policy-makers.

"Fuck," he moaned, "That explains those stupid-assed policies." He brushed at his beard, wiped his hands, and patted the server bot on its tray. "Memo, JARVIS: France, work-permit team: address requests to EU council until further notice. Task, JARVIS: Time-stamp, elimination of HYDRA from French International Trade offices, installation and empowerment of octo-free staff: Memo, further notice, work-permit team."

"May I set a task, Tony?" Jane asked with interest.

"Be our guest,” he replied grandly. "JARVIS! Attend!"

"Certainly, sir," JARVIS replied snootily enough that Tony grabbed at his chest with pain, uttering _a hit! A palpable hit!_

"What task may I set for you, Dr Foster," he continued much more warmly. "Don't worry about the format."

"I'd like some research done into HYDRA infiltration into academic controlling bodies, together with timelines and alterations in policies. I would like that earlier than I think Darcy would be free to do it, though."

"Indeed, the topic and its more general iterations are of deep importance," JARVIS replied. "I believe I may in fact know a group of people quite well qualified and interested in the topics. I shall send the request along, together with the appropriate files and pointers to other information."

Jane's mouth curled up in an evil smile.

"Oh, wait, Jane, don't ..."; Tony called out, alarmed.

"JARVIS, I believe this may be the beginning of a lovely friendship."

"Indeed, Dr Foster," JARVIS purred back. "I quite agree."

* * *

The SI servers were clean. SI personnel had been saved and sorted, and either cleared or taken away by carefully examined members of the FBI. The Ruggers, the HEPA team, the Geek squad all had closed out their urgent caseloads, prioritized and saved the remainder, and gone to lovely lovely hotels with delicious and swift room service and thousand-count sheets.

S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel ... well, that was tough. They had done what they could, but with twenty percent unknown as to allegiance, and with the destruction of the entire infrastructure of the Division, further chaos was inevitable. But everyone they knew was clean, everyone who could be found, they had brought home. Everyone they knew was HYDRA and who, again, could be found, had been offered to the authorities on-site.

Natasha had testified and disappeared. Clint had passed along Tony's invitation to her, and really, that was all that could be expected. Tony had taken the fact that she had dumped her own files too as an invitation, and had busy moles digging into her origins. Origins, parents, the very _age_ at which she had been taken into the Red Room were among the basic facts missing from her files and, given what else was there, were obviously things even she didn't know. Pepper agreed: Natasha Natalia Natalie ought to know. So.

Clint had moved in, had requested a chip, and had, so far as the rest of the world was concerned, disappeared. Tony could see where he was, and sometimes Clint would let him know what he was doing. Sometimes he asked for a lift. Sometimes he asked for help.

Sometimes he sent presents. Tony still wasn't sure how he felt about that.

Jane, Thor, and Darcy had moved in permanently, to the quiet pleasure of Bruce, the delight of Pepper, JARVIS, and, if he were _forced_ to be honest, Tony; and to the varied opinion of The Other Guy, who liked both Jane and Darcy and who ... seemed to enjoy thrashing Thor.

Well, as long as Thor was happy.

Cap. And his new best bud.

And, evidently, Cap's old best bud.

Well, the invitation was out there, passed from Clint to Nat to Cap, Clint said. Any time, any where. Any thing. Not a one had called yet.

All Tony could do was prep, and wait, and. Let them do what they would.

Cap had called before. He would call again.

Tony would. Tony and Pep.

Tony and the rest of the Avengers, field and staff, would be ready when Captain America called.


End file.
